Atlantic Markets & East Indian 'Monopolies': Overlapping Networks of Transatlantic and East Indian Trade

Abstract

The American early republic's trade in the Indian and Pacific Oceans was a new departure for U.S. merchants, but the Asian goods they sought were familiar from the trans-Atlantic market in East Indian goods. That market had supplied the colonies with tea, pepper, and other commodities in the late colonial period, and in the economic depression of the 1780s. U.S. merchants moved from importing East India goods from transatlantic suppliers to re-exporting East Indian goods across the Atlantic during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). This was a change in the American role in the transatlantic market for East Indian goods, a change which reflected the continued importance of that market. That market continued to be important after 1815 as well. This transatlantic (and inter-European) market for East Indian goods gives the lie to the idea of East India Company monopolies. While the English, Dutch, French, Swedish and other East India Companies had, in theory, separate, siloed national monopolies on the import and sale of East India goods, the reality of transatlantic trade meant that there was one transatlantic market for tea, pepper and other East Indian goods, in which all the various importers (the East India Companies and U.S. merchants alike) competed with each other, to greater or lesser success, depending on the taxes and regulations of their states, and the efficiency of their business operations. The idea of separate national monopolies was, and had been for at least a generation, a myth. This paper will look at the transatlantic markets for tea and pepper, as well as Yemeni coffee, and suggest ways in which price history might be brought to bear on this issue.